


The Opposite Of Love

by Spadesjade



Category: British Actor RPF
Genre: Abandonment, F/M, Infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-28
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-02-27 06:30:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2682695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spadesjade/pseuds/Spadesjade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She left him, but never told him why. He knows why, but he still has to find her. One year later, he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Opposite Of Love

She climbed up the steps to her flat -- no, it wasn't a flat, it was an apartment. America now, American lingo. She smiled to herself and shook her head, rolling her shoulders, removing the weight of the day.

It had been a very long day.

She pushed the key into the lock, feeling the grate as the tumblers slid into place, and then reached down for the doorknob, hearing the click as her home greeted her.

She stepped inside. Something was wrong. She reached over immediately and flipped on the light.

He was sitting in her chair. The only chair in the room. He was sitting in it, looking at her with such a look that she immediately felt her every limb begin to shake. 

It was the first time in a year she had allowed his name to pass her lips. At least when she was awake.

"What are you doing here?"

The raw emotion in his eyes shifted and swirled like a kaleidoscope. Joy at seeing her after so long. Rage that she had run away from him. Relief that she was alive, safe. Frustration that they had ever been parted. Finally, it landed on indignation. "Wouldn't the more appropriate question be, how did you find me?"

She paused, considering. Quite frankly, she had expected him to find her months ago. She'd been reluctantly disappointed that he hadn't. Someone like him had money and connections to scour a globe...

Of course, that was why she had picked this little shit-splat town. It was practically invisible.

"No, I stand by my question," she set, setting her bag down but not stepping any deeper into the room, even as she closed the door behind her. "Why are you here?"

He stood up, and she flinched back against the door. He noticed, and pulled himself a bit away from her, not wanting to threaten, even it he really did want to. "You are my wife. I came here to find you. To see you. To find out..." he choked off. Her angry expression deepened as he realized that last part was really unnecessary and a bit insulting. 

Of course he knew why she left. He'd always known, but couldn't bring himself to face it. It would mean the absolute and utter failure of himself as a person. What kind of man could face that without flinching? 

He drew a breath. "To find out," he said, leveling his voice, "why you didn't even talk to me." Yell at me, scream at me, tell me what a hateful bastard I am.

She considered this statement. "What was there to say?" she asked flatly. 

"So much," he breathed, the kaleidoscope shifting to an emotion she couldn't handle. She couldn't let herself see that he loved her. Still loved her. Even though he had cheated on her, broken her heart, destroyed her, the bastard still loved her. She had made the choice to chase herself out of her own life for exactly this reason.

He could look at her, and with that one look he could snap any resolve she could have like a twig from a tree. She had known a year ago that if she confronted him, he would cry and beg forgiveness, which she would give him. She knew this about herself, her weakness. Worse, however (and this only came to her on the nights when it was the hardest to stay way), was that maybe he would have admitted that he didn't love her, that he had only been acting for the last three months, that the spark was gone and it was a mistake for them ever to have gotten married. 

She couldn't pick which one was worse, even now. 

He took a step closer. She lifted her head from where it had drifted down, staring at his damn shiny shoes, and fear flickered across her face. The reaction was enough to jar him. She had never looked at him in fear, never once in their two years together. In his hesitation, she decided to pounce.

"You cheated," she said in the same nonchalant voice. "You strayed. Someone else caught your eye. Not a one time deal, but an affair. You had already replaced me. All I did was make room."

His expression was baffled. "Make room? That's what you call it? You disappeared! I mean, from the face of the Earth! I called the Library, they said you had given two weeks notice and that day was your last day. You plotted like a convict escaping a prison for two weeks! Your accounts, emptied. Your cards, canceled. There wasn't even a paper trail. You didn't tell your parents where you were going, you just vanished. I was out of my mind with worry! I thought you dead, or worse--"

"Worse," she whispered, "definitely worse."

She had wanted to die. Finding out had been a kind of dying. Coming backstage to surprise him, hearing the noises in his dressing room, getting a peek through the crack and seeing his naked backside with those unfamiliar legs clad in come-fuck-me shoes, lacy black things that had chords that wound nearly to the knees, and heels that were more like spikes, pressing into his cheeks--

She wanted to vomit again, thinking of it. She hadn't been able to wear a pair of high heeled shoes since.

At first she wanted to believe that someone else had snuck into Tom's dressing room in a secret liaison, just stealing the empty space for a quick fuck. But no, that voice was her husband's, and the scrapes the heels had left on his skin were still bright red and visible later that night when she'd lifted the sheets to make damn sure she hadn't been wrong. She'd accidentally woke him in the process, and lying had come to her faster than it ever had, saying she had bumped him in his sleep but it felt like there were scratches on him and she was worried. 

He told her he had backed into some old nails sticking from some old scenery on set. It was as good a lie as hers. 

It was hard to avoid a man you lived with. She managed it for the next couple of days because he was still finishing his run and was always home so late because of the fans haunting the stage door. When the run was done, he just wanted to rest, and she found an emergency project that required her to stay late at the Library for the next three days. On the fourth day he started to pop in for visits, him being such a bibliophile, and avoidance got harder, and she came up with a conference that she had to attend, and that he shouldn't go with her as he still needed to unwind, and maybe begin to prepare for the next project.

A large part of her had wanted him to chase her. Wanted him to insist that no, he wanted to spend time with her, regardless of where. But no, he all-too-eagerly agreed that he could use some time. All she could think of were those marks on his ass, and wondering how many more would be there when she came back.

She spent a few days in a very cheap motel, not daring to go out, but making more calls than she ever had in her life. She scoured the world for jobs -- she was a librarian, and every place had libraries -- and used the money she'd saved on not splurging on the hotel to fly out for an interview, and get offered a job. Which she took. She had already put in her notice at work and she only had a week to go. 

It occurred to her that she was being a coward. That was fine with her. She knew herself too well to argue. She knew all the scenarios that would play out if she confronted her husband. Living half her life in books had already shown her every possibility, and none of them ended with her being happy.

Screw closure. All she wanted was to hurt him as much as possible.

Of course, the true, insidious way to hurt him was not to tell him. To just...disappear. 

Her name on his tongue pulled her back to this place, this apartment, with him standing in front of her, finally, after all this time. 

"I was sick with fear about what had happened to you," he said, his voice broken, hurt.

"Good," she said without a flick of remorse.

His face fell. She felt a perverse kind of joy in that. Everyone always felt so sorry for this bastard, but they had no idea. They fawned over his perfection, they extolled his virtues and put him on a pedestal that would have made any mortal's nose bleed. But they didn't know. They didn't know, even she didn't think she knew, the depth of his flaws. Sure, she knew his annoying habits and his shortcomings, but those were nothing compared to the fact that he could look her square in the face and lie, could fuck someone else in his dressing room and still try to make love to her the next day. All she could see was a cold, calculating monster whose enormous acting ability had fooled her utterly.

Then again, she had always been a fool. It couldn't have been that hard to set her up. He really needn't have gone through the trouble. 

She was a fool to submit herself continuously to her parents' indifference. She was a fool to attempt friendships when people continuously rejected her offers of a coffee or lunch, or to go see a movie. Everyone had a life but her. She had a house full of books. 

When he had come into her life, she hadn't wanted to believe her luck. This must have been what God had been saving for her, finally her recompense for putting up with a world full of cold shoulders. In her desperation for affection, she had let the whirlwind swallow her whole, and he had become everything she'd never had -- friend, lover, father, brother...

She had smothered him. Eventually, he wanted to be free.

She loved him enough to give him what he wanted, but hated him enough to give it to him in the worst way she could think of. 

"I'm not seeing her anymore."

She told herself that the sudden acceleration of her heart was curiosity. "Why not? She was kinky. You like kinky."

He gave her a reproachful look. "I didn't love her. I love you."

"Seriously, how badly do you want me to punish you?" she snapped. "Stop kissing my ass. I don't believe a word that comes out of your mouth. I have no idea how long you were lying to me, how many times your dick came to me fresh out of her cunt. You can pull your puppy-dog eyes until you grow a tail, but every time I look at you all I can see is her high heels making dents in your ass!" 

Her voice had risen to a shriek and it had cowed him. It wasn't enough. She wanted him to weep and beg and show throat, only to have her cut it. 

"I thought about killing myself," she said, her tone flattening to matter-of-fact. "I couldn't decide how, but I knew I was going to leave a note that said, 'This is what my husband did to me.' See what that did to your lovely career. But I just couldn't do it. Must be that natural human instinct for self-preservation. Even when I took a bottle full of pills I found myself choking them out in the sink--"

"Stop it," he hissed, and she realized a few tears had started to leak from one eye onto his narrow cheek. 

"So I figured you didn't deserve t0 know what happened to me," she went on calmly. "I figured the only important things I had in our flat were things that would make me think of you, so I didn't even pack, except for a few shirts I had smuggled into work." Gritting her teeth, she finished with, "I even sold the rings. Just so I wouldn't have to look at them anymore and think of you."

He looked up at her. Those eyes of his were huge and blue and bright, the green streaks standing out, magnified by the tears standing there. 

"Got me through two months on what I got for them," she mused, thinking of the diamonds. "Although they tried to give me a hard time over the engravings."

"You're horrible," he choked.

"I am what you made me," she said airily. "So, is that all? You see I'm fine and doing well without you. Although I would have preferred it to haunt you for the rest of your life, but I've never gotten what I wanted before, why should I start--"

"STOP IT!" he bellowed, and in a rare moment of surprise, she did. It was unlike him to break his temper like this. Sure, he had little bouts of snark, who didn't? But he didn't roar. Not like that. Not for real.

For a moment, they just looked at each other, his gaze flickering from hurt to angry to utterly defeated. She just stared back, removing any trace of emotion she could find in her face. She had given him too much, she realized. She was supposed to be indifferent to him, not hateful. Hate was too close to love. 

"What do I have to say, or do," he finally spoke, surprising her with the pleading tone in his voice, "to get you to come back?"

She frowned. "To what? Your life? Our marriage? There is no 'back.' The bridge has been burned. I gave you two years of my life with nothing to show for it but regret. You think I've come all this way over the last year just to double back for a second helping?" She sighed, the venom gone from her voice. "If I had a single wish, I would wish I had told you no, that day. That I had stood firm and trusted my own gut. I would give it all back, you know. Not just the pain, but the good times, too. They only torture me."

His eyes still stood with tears, but he looked like the wind had been taken from him now. His expression was totally devoid of all emotion, eyes drooped, corners of his mouth sagging down with the lack of any effort to hold them up. "Even that," he whispered. "The Saturday mornings we talked in bed until noon."

"The lunches in the park," she said, but there was no wistful tone in her voice. "You reading to me, me learning how to give massages to help you relax after a taxing shoot. Even our wedding night. Every single time you were ever inside me. I want every trace of you gone, even from my body. God was merciful when he wouldn't give me your child. Shows how providence works even when we can't see it. "

He blinked, and the tears slipped down, but he pushed them away with his fingers. Even his hands, the part of him she'd loved the most, even those had no power over her. There was no longing in her, she realized. There was no hopeful corner where she waited for him to persuade her, as he had persuaded her so many times in their relationship. Maybe that was it, she thought bitterly. Maybe she had made him work too hard for every inch. Once the prize was won, what was the point? When people smiled and said the journey was more important than the destination, they failed to realize that journeys ended.

Just like theirs.

"So we're done," he whispered, and she could hear that little crack in his voice, the one that signaled to her that his heart was finally broken. She felt no victory in it. 

"I guess we need to get that divorce," she said indifferently. "No point in keeping you in a marriage that doesn't exist."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "And what about you? You have plans to move on?"

She snorted. "Once bitten twice shy, baby. You think I'll do this to myself again?"

He shook his head. "No, that...that isn't right. I mean, you...you deserve better than that."

She almost laughed. As she was gutting him, he was wanting her to find happiness? The thought made her angry. Always trying to be the better man, trying to keep your dignity. Trying to be more gracious than the other person. 

"I do," she said firmly. "I deserve better than letting anyone touch me again."

He looked pained. In the entirety of their exchange, he hadn't taken a single breath closer to her. Now he seemed itching to break that resolve, but she had shied from him so many times he couldn't make himself do it. 

"What did you really think was going to happen here?" she asked suddenly. Her voice had come out warmer than she'd intended, as if encouraging him to confide in her. Hopefully he knew better than that.

He shrugged. "I don't...I'm not sure. I guess I expected you to rail and scream at me. I almost...no, I definitely wish you had. At least it would have shown me you still feel something, but this..." he waved a hand at her. "I feel like I don't even know you."

"Good," she sighed. "That's what I was going for, anyway."

"Water off a duck's back," he said. "That's what you used to say to me, wasn't it? When they put me down, when critics or fanboys were harsh and mean, you said to let it slide like water off a ducks back."

"Always take your own advice."

"Well, I'm not a duck." And with that, he closed the distance between them, shoved her shoulders into the heavy wooden door behind her, and to her absolute horror, he closed his mouth over hers in a passionate kiss.

For a split second, everything in her reacted. It was like dying -- your whole life flashing before your eyes. But it wasn't her whole life, just her life with him. The whole picture lay stretched out before her, the joys and pleasures and the deterioration and the fear and finally the agonizing end. 

She was right. She had finally found the opposite of love.

Three years ago, this kiss would have sent her spiraling. Two years ago, it would have made her weep for the loss of the way he made love to her, until she cried from the ecstasy and swooned from his touches. A year ago, it would have made her pound her fists against him and scream and tear at his skin and demand to know why, oh why had he done this to her? 

Now, it did nothing. Absolutely nothing.

He felt it. He pulled his lips back with a small smack and looked down at her, seeing her finally for what she had become. There was no fire there, not even in his own heart. In killing her own love she had also killed his. 

And the fact that he'd driven her to it nearly made him mad. 

He let go of her, trembling slightly. He would have to learn to live with it, as she had no doubt tried to do at the beginning. Maybe one day he would heal, but he feared he would become like her -- unable to feel. Was that the only way she had been able to cope? You can't have what you want, so you choose to have nothing?

He didn't think he would ever forgive himself for this. This was worse than simply breaking a heart. This was murdering one.

With a sigh, he reached for the doorknob. Any offers he wanted to make for her financial stability were long forgotten. Any pleading he could make to give him another chance would be dismissed outright. There was simply nothing to do but...

...give up.

"Goodbye," he said simply.

She nodded, satisfied. It was a hollow satisfaction. As he went through the door, she reached up and touched her cheeks.

They were wet.


End file.
